Possible Record Methane Spike at Barrow, Alaska — What Does it Mean?

There’s no avoiding it — climate change is a controversial subject; a threat that should unify us all that, due to reticence, denial, fear, and a basic lack of understanding, is instead often quite divisive. But among the subjects that stand out as real fodder for acidic controversy, the issue of methane feedbacks from the global climate system — the oceans, thawing permafrost, and especially the Arctic — is one of the worst. There’s a noted tendency to either downplay or overplay risks. Though this polarization is likely fed by the general mysteriousness and complexity of the subject, its potential existential nature also feeds into the heat that methane feedback-related discussions tend to draw.

It all makes one hope for improved discussion on the subject. Given the fact that catastrophic methane feedback appears unlikely (but would have a high overall impact if it did emerge), it’s probable that the subject will continue to generate a difficult conversation for as long as human-forced warming is an issue, and so long as the science continues to remain uncertain.

(The Copernicus Observatory shows surface methane hot spots in China, Africa, South America, the U.S., Canada, Europe, Russia and the Arctic. Note that generally high concentrations still tend to center over the Arctic. Meanwhile, the various hot spots seem to indicate major sources like fossil-fuel industry wildfires, wetlands, droughts, the Arctic Ocean and glacial and permafrost thaw. Also note that current readings indicate a serious rise in global methane concentrations, but not a spike that significantly exceeds peak 20th-century additions. It’s worth considering that, during recent years, expanded natural gas exploration and extraction through fracking has likely contributed a substantial new human methane source addition to the global atmosphere. Meanwhile, there is some concern that the Earth System may be starting to mildly feed back by bleeding additional carbon from warming lands, forests, oceans and permafrost.)

It’s not really a question of whether or not some scientists are concerned or if there is a risk, however ill-defined. Dr. James Hansen has often indicated that a strong methane feedback from the Arctic or world ocean system would be a climate nightmare that could well eliminate the time window to respond to prevent catastrophic warming. Methane and other carbon feedbacks are prime suspects for past hothouse event triggers — potentially playing a role in setting off events like the Permian-Triassic Extinction and/or greatly contributing to the loss of ocean health that was a key feature of these extinction events. Neil deGrasse Tyson alluded to this risk in his 2014 rerendering of the science series Cosmos.

The graph tracks hourly methane readings at the data collection location for Barrow, Alaska. As shown, the recent (and unconfirmed) data set shows what appears to be a record methane spike for that location. Also note that big spikes appear in the hourly data at certain points many times since 2000, as is typical during this time of year. Most notably, a similar very large spike occurred in 2004, one that the recent 2016 spike just edges out.

Looking at the graph, there’s a lot that it doesn’t tell us. Firstly, what is the source of this methane spike? If the spike was an outlier with no periodicity it might indicate the potential for some kind of anomaly or human source. However, since seasonal spikes seem to show up in this graph, this hints that the current spike is environmental. In addition, since Alaska as a whole and Barrow in particular both recently experienced some of their warmest weather on record, there’s some reason to suspect that this added heat played a part in the 2016 spike. And, 2004 also saw a period of then-record warmth during summer in Alaska. So Alaska warming is in line as a suspect cause for the 2016 methane spike.

As anomalous spikes go, this one is pretty big — it apparently set a new hourly record methane reading around 2370 parts per billion for the recording station. But since this Barrow spike isn’t visibly part of some big regional methane plume and since the global monitors aren’t recording a big methane jump as well, we can be pretty certain that this particular spike, if confirmed, is a local and probable short-term issue, and not a sudden, huge methane release issue of global importance. However, it does represent another point in a context that seems to include some big local methane sources popping up in the Arctic environment and possibly indicating a larger, if comparatively moderate, regional feedback taking place in response to the warming and thawing ongoing there. (No consensus scientific study has yet fully confirmed such a preliminary observation, which is a threat analysis-based potential identification on my part.)

So, overall, something to add to the big pot of bubbling concerns — but nothing to light your hair on fire over yet.

Conditions in Context

During the 20th century, large-scale industrialization linked to fossil-fuel burning and extraction helped to drive rapid rates of atmospheric methane increase. These rates peaked during the late 1980s and early 1990s when global policy measures helped curtail methane leakage from fossil fuel infrastructure. According to NOAA, annual rates of global atmospheric methane increase peaked in 1991 at a 14.32 ppb yearly jump.

(Global methane is again hitting a rapid rate of rise. Though the Earth System appears to be providing some ominous rumblings that feedbacks may be on the way, the present spike is likely primarily due to increased fossil-fuel extraction activity, particularly due to fracking. Image source: NOAA.)

Such curtailments helped to produce a mid-1990s to mid-2000s plateau in the rate of atmospheric methane accumulation. Now, with the advent of fracking and with global warming appearing to generate a number of possible new methane sources (or amplify traditional sources) from the Earth System, rates of annual methane increase are again on the rise. In 2014 and 2015, annual increases hit 12.53 ppb (the third highest annual rate of increase in the NOAA record) and 10.07 ppb respectively (tenth highest). Preliminary reports show that 2016 appears to be on track to hit near 10 ppb worth of atmospheric increase.

As a result, it appears that fracking, primarily, and warming-related feedback (possibly secondarily) are contributing to annual rates of atmospheric methane increase that are comparable to peak periods of increase during the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, these rates of increase, though significantly adding a heat forcing that about equals one quarter to one third of the annual CO2 addition, show no current indication of a catastrophic rate of methane increase that would point toward the major environmental releases some have feared. As such, the greatest part of our ability to currently prevent further rising rates of atmospheric methane comes in the form of rapidly reducing all fossil fuel use and particularly to contain and reduce coal mining and oil and natural gas fracking. And if we do that, there will be less heat stress on the environmental methane stores and less overall long-term pressure for the kinds of feedbacks some of us have come to fear.

17 Comments

wharf rat

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Rob – thanks for your tireless work. I note that the current CH4 belch is quite like the 2004 event if the baselines is adjusted so they start from the same place. So, a local release that is seasonal in nature? Long term, and as you point out, it is the exponential baseline increase that is worrying and not this specific belch.

Off topic, but Arizona is about receive life-threatening conditions from Pacific Tropical Storm Newton. Heavy rains and what not, like in Southeast Louisiana this past August but hopefully not as intense. As you can see in the image below, the storm is already dragging moisture from the Great Lakes area, specifically Minnesota!

MIAMI, Sept. 7 (UPI) — Tropical Storm Newton is spreading heavy rains into Arizona and New Mexico on Wednesday after making landfall as a hurricane in Mexico’s mainland and then weakening, the National Hurricane Center said. Tropical Storm Newton is expected to generate up to 3 inches of rain in the central part of the Baja California peninsula. Mexico’s Sonora state is expected to see rain accumulation up to 6 inches — possibly 10 inches in isolated areas. Southeastern Arizona and southern New Mexico are expected to get from 1 inch to 3 inches of total rain through Thursday. “This heavy rainfall may cause life-threatening flash floods and mud slides in areas of mountainous terrain,” the NHC …

If even a small amount of buried gas hydrates meets its melting point, the disassociation would so perturb the other hydrates in the immediate area as to destabilize them too. Soon its a big event. I don’t buy that these events will always be a slow event.

But for this spike, look where you are at – home of the fossil fuel industry with numerous large gas reserves in the area. This was probably venting on a grand scale.

Marcusblanc

I watched a documentary about 10 years ago, about British scientists looking in the ice cores for evidence of a mega-burp. They thought they might find something, and it would have made a much better (and scarier) documentary. but they didn’t.

Hats off to RS for his continued nuanced approach on this. It’s one of a large number of things to watch and worry about, as if we had bought a whole stack of really bad lottery tickets.

Catastrophic short-term methane release is just one of a whole suite of possible nightmare futures, but it may be a gradual death-grip, rather than one huge trump (UK slang)!

Griffin

Great post Robert. Thank you for all the information here.
I also wholeheartedly support your ongoing reporting of methane activity in an effort to increase our collective situational awareness of the subject.
As we have discussed here before, it is not only the big pulse that should have us concerned about methane. Any increase in emissions from methane stores off the baseline levels must be monitored to see if it is part of a growing trend.
The lack of investment in monitoring equipment by our country has left us in the dark for information. It really is like trying to feel for a hurricane without having the NHC around to keep us safe. We wake up on some days and it’s cloudy and breezy but we have no clue if it is a squall or the outer bands of a Cat 5. All we know is that the water is warm, it’s mid-September and we are on the coast with nowhere to run.

Spike

In medicine there is a phenomenon of saturation pharmacokinetics, where increasing the dose of a drug leads to slow steady increases in blood levels until the body’s metabolic capacity is saturated, and then further even small increases in dose lead to soaring blood levels and drug effects become more manifest. Epanutin is the classic case, and alcohol another.

Anyone who has had “one drink too many” will be familiar with it. I know when to stop now😉

For a long while I’ve wondered if the atmospheric breakdown of methane could be saturable, as I understand it is hydroxyl mediated, and presumably this is in finite quantities in the atmosphere. Note this is simple speculative musing, not catastrophism, as we all know how explosive methane is in more ways than one, and Robert’s article is a careful and well written attempt at approaching the subject sensibly which I don’t want to detract from. I just wonder if anyone here has seen any attempt at quantifying if there is a certain limit to the capacity of Earth to deal with this stuff. We may be a long way from that limit but I don’t know if it is known.

I’ve never been able to find anything of note on the subject. But perhaps there is a threshold somewhere along the line at which increasing emissions produce increased concentrations that will be greater than the current situation suggests. All the more reason perhaps to take the sort of cautious prudential route that modern humans seem to have eschewed.